Glenn Nicholls Counselling & Psychotherapy in Cambridge & London

I’ve been a psychotherapist for over twenty years, mostly in private practice. I offer couple counselling, supervision, training, group therapy, executive and leadership coaching, and organisational development consultancy. My professional experience includes:

• Lead Tutor (2011-2022) for the Diploma in Integrative Supervision of Individuals and Groups at The Grove Practice, London
• Tutor for four years on the Certificate in Psychodynamic Counselling at the University of Cambridge
• Psychotherapist at the Whittington Hospital NHS Trust for four years
• Trauma counsellor at Transport for London
• Principle Tutor and founding member of the first Gestalt and Integrative Psychotherapy training in Budapest
• Summer school teacher and counsellor in Crimea
• Set up and led a Couples & Intimate Systems course in Cambridge
• Providing executive coaching to leaders in business, science and tech, government, religious organisations, academia and the arts

I often work with writers, artists and people more generally engaged in creative process. Some of whom have managed to got lost along the way, whilst others need a little help in getting there.

My writing is fictionalised, it is based on conversations I have had with myself and other people over the last twenty-plus years while becoming a psychotherapist. I've found writing helps me see what I think about life and psychotherapy.

These lines from Rainer Marie Rilke's poem Fictional Fact perfectly sums up how I approach writing::

'There is always a fiction in the fact
The fiction holds a lot of hidden facts
In the end, I found something which
might be the beginning of nothing
And now the paradox begins
with an open end'

My most recent blog is entitled:

Wanting doesn't get what you've already got

‘I am really angry with you.’

‘Why?’ I reply.

‘You’re not listening to me.’

‘What makes you think I’m not listening?’

Martha pauses apparently considering the question, ‘Okay, so you do listen but I don’t think you get me, I don’t feel seen and you don’t show empathy: it’s like you have no compassion.’

‘Ah,’ I reply, this is uncomfortable to hear, ‘I know how bad it feels not being seen,’ I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m trying to recover from an apparent lack of empathy, that would be defensive and besides, I partly agree with her.

Martha eyes me with what looks like suspicion and says, ‘I feel like I’m on my own right now.’ Although I want us to see each other, showing empathy and compassion would, for me at least, be self-abandonment. 

Martha seems to want me to be with her in her pain, but in what way? And which pain? There is the pain of not being seen, of feeling alone, of being unmet, and then there is my apparent lack of empathy and compassion; and it could of course be something else entirely.

It struck me that although Martha had said I seem to lack empathy and compassion she had not said that this is what she wants, and if it is, what does she think they might give her?

Psychotherapy is not about client or therapist getting what they want, even if they knew what that is. Whilst psychotherapy is about wanting, it is also about love and things more important than love.

If Martha wants empathy and compassion she is not asking too much, she is perhaps asking too little.

Continue reading, 'Wanting doesn't get what you've already got'

I'm an accredited psychotherapist with United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy. My practice as a clinical supervisor, couple counsellor, group therapist, trainer and executive coach accord with UKCP's Code of Ethics.

I practice individual psychotherapy, executive and leadership coaching, and couple counselling from home in Cambridge. I work remotely in the UK and across different time zones via Skype, FaceTime, Zoom and by telephone.